Hi
I’m new to KiCad and to PCB design anyway, so, please excuse my ignorance.
Following docs I created schematics of a simple circuit and now I’m in the PCB Editor.
The board I defined as 4 copper layers.
The circuit is simple but it is quite obvious that all connections cannot be made on one layer.
And so I’m stuck at a collision, a route which cannot be done without changing layer, or some magic
Two questions:
Do I have to make all those vias myself?
Several connections are between GND “legs” of different components. Wouldn’t it be possible to have one layer as GND and connect all them to it?
I must be missing something fundamental. All those examples like Battery-Resistor-Diode don’t really help.
I would be thankful for any assistance.
Regards,
ChrisO
BTW
It would be good to let us define what a donation should be used for. My one would go for coffee of a docs writer
You will find vias in File / Board set up, in Edit / Via properties, in Place / Add vias, in Tools / Cleanup vias, in Preferences / PCB editor / Display options and Appearance Table on RHS of workspace, up top in objects and down bottom.
Thank you @jmk for your quick answer.
I didn’t have a problem to find vias
I think, I need something like HowTo or BestPractice for routing.
Am just wondering how have been done those quite complicated, compared to the my one, PCBs.
I feel really strange, am I the only person having such a problem? Is routing for everybody else something obvious?
Thanks for your time
ChrisO
Placing parts is the first step.
Place those parts that must be in a certain position first.
Take note of the other parts and how they connect. Move them around your board 'till it seems everything will connect with short tracks on a single layer, then place the tracks
If you can’t place all the tracks on one layer, study your parts placement, maybe move some of those parts and try again with tracks.
Repeat the above as necessary.
When you have finally decided you cannot improve the layout using a single layer of copper, add the second layer and use vias.
Treat the job as a challenge to use no vias and only a single layer of copper.
I doubt anyone, ever, no matter how experienced, has managed to make a reasonably sized board with their first placement of parts.
I have not seen your schematic diagram. But unless you are doing something very critical, there is also nothing wrong with using SOME jumpers. I did a 2 sided board recently which had jumpers at various angles other than 0 or 90 degrees. Wires can easily be used as jumpers, or if you are doing surface mount you can use 0 ohm 1206 resistors (for example) as jumpers so long as the current is under maybe 500 mA. In olden days circuit boards were commonly single layer and were full of jumper wires, even in mass produced commercial products such as the control board of our 1990 vintage gas stove which we recently replaced. I designed a commercial power supply in about Y2K that was intended to be cheap (and built in Thailand) so was also done with a single sided pcb which included jumpers.
Till now I used only 2 layer boards. My designs are (it is because of EMC): bottom is fully GND and all other connections at top (so I have only vias at GND).
It is thanks to using microcontrollers in TQFP. I can went with VCC (at top) under it through its corner and then propagate through other corners and all VCC pins to the other elements. This way VCC tracks don’t disturb other tracks.
It may be not true . Everything depends.
Now I design practicaly first 4 layer board. It is only because I have microcontroller in QFN package so I can’t do my VCC trick and need inner layer for VCC. I suppose all other tracks will be only on top.
Yes. But when routing track you press ‘V’ and you have a via.
Make GND fill zone (bigger than your PCB) at layer you need. When you need to connect something to GND place via. Do some experiments to have it got GND net. I’m just not sure if in V6 may be you have the layer with your GND zone being selected or not. I’m not familiar with V6 yet. In V5 when you placed via at area when only the GND zone was (even being on top when zone at bottom) then the via got GND net.
It is not about PCB designing itself (in sense how to do what I want) but rather about how PCB should be designed (what you should want when designing PCB).
Read the articles I listed here:
I say, look around a bit, watch some youtube videos, click a bit around though the menu’s and experement with functions. Combine that with reading parts of the documentation and searching this forum (most of the obvious questions have been answered 10 times over).
For beginners I recommend to do some “test” projects with about 10 to 20 parts. With simpler projects some parts (such as the routing) are too trivial to learn from, while with more complicated projects it takes much more time to correct mistakes. You also learn quicker from a bunch of small projects then from a single big project.
And of course, after you’ve gained some experience and grown some confidence you can take on more complicated projects.
